


operation firebird (maybe someday)

by allyourdarlings



Series: operation firebird [4]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, Captain Cobra - Freeform, F/M, Gen, OUAT season 5, Once Upon A Time, Post-Underworld, Underworld, captain cobra feels, operation firebird
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-01
Updated: 2016-12-01
Packaged: 2018-09-03 11:35:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8711053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allyourdarlings/pseuds/allyourdarlings
Summary: Part of the operation firebird series.  Post-underworld adjustment.  Captain Cobra.  Rated for language only.





	

Killian wakes.  
  
But the tendrils of his somber dreams stay with him, curling on the edge of his consciousness.  Dark, greedy, enthralling.  They pull him back into the recess of his mind, deep enough that light can’t reach him.  
  
“Killian?” she whispers, the lad entreats, life calls.  
  
“Maybe tomorrow,” he mumbles as he turns over and falls back into dreams.  


* * *

  
On good days, they call it now, he shuffles from one room to the next.  He’s never sure where he’s headed.  His eyes aren’t focus, his mind lost within its own despair, his soul still drowning in the River Styx.  
  
He’s a poltergeist in his own house, a shade in his own life.  
  
He’s back but he’s not home.  


* * *

  
He is screaming again.  He’s not sure what’s real and what’s a ghost in his mind.  His dreamscape seems to conjure up worse demons than the Underworld.  But the taste of salt, of his own wet tears, that’s real.  
  
“Dad,” Henry says.  And it is like a beacon calling him home.  


* * *

  
Killian has braved many a storm bare chested before but now he shivers on bright Maine mornings.  Henry is wrapping a scarf around his neck.  Made for him by Regina of all people.  
  
“There was a period where she wanted to appear domestic, like a mother.  She learned to bake and sew and knit.”  
  
Killian frowns.  "Those are funny ideas of a mother.“  
  
Henry smiles and nods.  His mothers "kick ass” as the lad sometimes says (out of their earshot).  For Henry, always for Henry.  That’s a good mother. “But she makes a nice scarf.”  
  
“Aye, she does.”  
  
He walks the lad to school.  Emma always looks like she wants to follow but she doesn’t.  Just kisses him and tells him to come back to her.  
  
The cricket doctor had said this was normal, even expected.  It doesn’t feel normal to him.  Darkness had been a familiar companion, he had known its depths, had been consumed by it for centuries, and yet it had driven him across realms, across time, to do the impossible - to meet Emma, to be a father to Henry.  But these days he can hardly bring himself to rise in the morning.  
  
It is Henry, the son of all of his loves, his own son, that draws him from bed.  On those good days.  
  
But then he gets lost again. Wanders off and doesn’t make it back to the house he helped picked.  Not until well after dark.  
  
They are waiting for him.  They are always waiting for him to come back.  Like he had made a run to the nearest grocer and couldn’t find the milk.  
  
And he is sorry, he is.  He says it every day.  He feels it every day.  But he doesn’t know how to make it any better, he doesn’t know how to be better.  


* * *

  
He doesn’t get up for several days. He doesn’t walk Henry to school all week.  
  
Hopper says it is natural.  But how can it be natural for him to be so fucked up?  So listless and lost? So ungrateful and undeserving?  
  
He has a family now, they’ve literally gone to hell and back for him, and he can’t even get himself out of bed sometimes.  How is this natural?  How is he not just a waste of a rescue? Of space?  
  
These questions circle his inner mind like Neverland demons.  They scream and rage and taunt him and he thinks he just wants it to stop, he wants it all to stop.  
  
“Hey, Dad,” says the voice that quiets the demons.  
  
“Aye, son?”  
  
Henry offers his hand and he gets up.

**Author's Note:**

> This was meant to be fluffy. There was going to be a puppy. You may have noticed there was just a pirate puppy who got hurt. Next one - there will be a puppy and it will not get hurt. (Pirate puppy will still be there too. And Captain Cobra feels.)


End file.
